


Atonement

by AlleiraDayne



Series: Instead of Going to Bed DAI Verse [15]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Guilt, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 03:50:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12004401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlleiraDayne/pseuds/AlleiraDayne
Summary: Amallia and Cullen discuss his past.





	Atonement

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/138010791@N02/40415070605/in/datetaken-public/)

Silence muted her thoughts as if they belonged to someone else, another’s memories. Amallia reviewed reports in her chair across from Cullen, but the distraction of a silence so thorough drew her from the depths of her reading. Still as stone, she found Cullen staring at the half-written message before him, unseeing, the consistent scratch of his quill absent as it hovered above the parchment.

“What are you thinking about?”

Maker, was he ill? What had him distracted so, with his glassy, distant stare and hand quaking as it pinched his quill?

 _Where_  was he?

 _When_?

“Cullen?”

Clarity focused his amber stare on hers, wide with concern. Fleeting, that understanding transformed, contorting into guilt as his shaking hand steadied and his quill met the parchment to complete his last thought. “Yes, Inquisitor?” he asked, eyes averted.

“Something is bothering you,” she declared. “Would you like to talk? Take a break?”

“It’s nothing,” he commented with a wave of his hand. “We have much work to do.”

She surveyed the workload between them, his desk covered in missives and reports that required their attention. Since arriving at Skyhold, Amallia found herself sitting behind a desk far too often; so many menial tasks demanded her approval she wondered how the Inquisition ever accomplished anything without her signature.

“How do you expect to be at your best if you’re distracted?” she asked.

“I’m not distracted, I’m …” he huffed as he continued to write. “I’m worried.”

“About?” she prompted.

His quill halted, blotting the parchment a dark blue-black with tendrils of seeping ink. Scoffing at the mess, he jammed the quill into the inkwell with a gruff sigh, hackles rising and brow furrowing. After a second’s consideration, he crumpled the parchment and tossed it aside, then glared across the sea of papers. Amallia waited, hands folding in her lap and leaning back in her chair.

“My past, if you must know.”

Ah, she considered.  _That_. “What about your past?”

For a moment he remained silent, eyes adrift as he scanned his desk. But before long, he settled on a parchment, snatching it from the pile with a quick hand. He brandished it at her, shaking it when she was too slow to take it.

With the parchment in hand, Amallia read aloud.

“Inquisitor. In your employ is a Templar that has parted ways with the Order. It would behoove you to replace him at once …” she paused and shot Cullen a wry frown. “The Commander of your forces should be a person of integrity, honesty, and respect for all peoples–even Mages,” she continued, reading faster with each sentence. “I regret to inform you that your appointed Commander is none of these and will compromise the reputation and ultimately the success of the Inquisition. His time at Kinloch Hold was rife with anti-mage sentiments and his tenure in Kirkwall was a miscarriage of justice disguised as ignorance. I’ve provided a list of possible replacements as a part of this message and would encourage you to consider these candidates. Sincerely, Bann Nosey-Arsehole why in the Maker's name would you take this seriously?" she asked as she flung the message to his desk, returning it to the top of the stack.

Stunned, Cullen appeared surprised by her response. “As much of a nosey arse you may think the Bann to be, he’s not wrong.”

Amallia shook her head, lips pursed. “Explain to me how he’s right.”

Cullen glowered, brow angled like a raptor's wings in flight. “You know everything. I've told you about Kinloch, about my behavior and my judgment of Mages after … after …”

“After you were tortured. Yes,” she finished for him. “I’m aware. You were a monster.”

As if she had backhanded him, Cullen gaped. “What?”

Rolling her eyes, Amallia scoffed at his fragile ego. “You’ve admitted to being such in the past. Am I supposed to disagree with you? Coddle you?”

Cullen’s glare softened, falling to his hands in his lap, chastised. Bile rose in her throat, stomach sinking and hands shaking. It was the discussion she had hoped they would come to discuss. But there was no avoiding it now.

“They should have never transferred you to Kirkwall after Kinloch,” she spat.

Another sardonic smirk crooked his lips. “I thanked the Maker for that opportunity,” he admitted. “I was grateful to be given another chance to aid the Order.”

Aid the Order? “Is that what you think you did there?!” she shouted, gripped by her temper. “Void take you, Cullen, you wanted to help them kidnap and torture Mages?!”

When had she stood? Towering over him, Amallia bore down like a hawk on her prey, hands planted on the edge of his desk. Shoving from the desk, she turned her back to him and bit her tongue, distrusting her tongue to remain civil. Arms folded across her chest, she turned back to him in her silence, hoping he might help her understand.

“I desperately needed to believe in the Order,” Cullen whispered, reddened eyes welling with tears. “They were all I had, so I did what I needed to do to get by. But I swear I have never laid a hand on a Mage. Ever. Not even when Meredith insisted I do so.”

Amallia sucked a deep breath through her nose, teeth grinding and nostrils flaring. “Bullshit. There was no way you were fit to handle the situation in Kirkwall,” she hissed. “To you, all Mages –  _people like me_  – were nothing but dangerous weapons on the edge of exploding at any moment. That’s a disgusting way to think of a human being.”

“I know, Inquisitor,” he whispered, voice cracking, straining.

With the bit in her anger, she railed him a third time. “Your health, your state of mind, is the fault of the Order, that I do not doubt,” she started. “But I still hold you accountable for your actions. I agree with you in that you should have seen Meredith for what she was much sooner. The things those people suffered because of her, because of the Templars—”

“I was there,” he interrupted, his reddened eyes finding hers. “They suffered because I turned my back on them until it was too late,” he admitted. Glassy eyes returned, sliding from hers to stare at nothing. Several seconds slipped through their fingers as she studied him, her chest constricting as she understood.

He relived his darkest moments.

A minute passed before Cullen returned to the present, standing from his desk with a resigned sigh and a shake of his head. “The Bann is right. I expect you to make a decision on my replacement within a fortnight, Inquisitor,” he finished as he rounded his desk and headed for the door.

Before he took two steps, Amallia halted him with a gentle hand to his shoulder. “There’s no decision to be made. You will remain my Commander.”

Maker, but he needed this, needed to hear it all no matter how it broke her heart to see him hurt. But as they stood there, her hand on his shoulder, her resolve faltered under amber eyes that begged for her forgiveness.

And when she found the last of her fortitude, Cullen cringed, head falling into his hand to run through his hair. Maker, give him strength, she prayed. Give him the willpower to grow, to heal. After every failure and defeat of the last few weeks, Amallia needed her few precious lights in the darkness, Cullen the brightest of them all.

_Please, don’t take him from me._

Despite her prayers, he fell prey to his demons. The dam broke and he wept. “Maker’s breath, I can’t keep doing this.”

With a tender touch of his cheek, she coaxed him to look her in the eye. “You have to. You are better than your past. You are not the same person you were with the Order.”

He scowled at that, tears spilling down his face. “I’m sorry, Inquisitor.”

 _Maker, know my heart_. He had to hear it. “You don’t need to apologize to me. You’ve never wronged me, personally. As a mage, I’m offended by your past but grateful that at the very least, you  _know_  that what you did was wrong and went to great lengths to improve. This Bann? Andraste's tits, the entire Mage community? They do  _not_  know that,” she explained.

Cullen remained silent, staring as though he were conflicted. When the silence stretched on, Amallia expressed her final thought on the matter.

“You’re in a unique position, Cullen. You are poised with such opportunity to right many past wrongs,” she continued. “As the Commander of our forces, reparations can be made. Own your past. Claim it so it no longer claims you. You’ll heal. Maybe not completely, maybe not whole ever again. But it’s better than the alternatives,” she explained. “And for the sake of everything that is good in this world, give the Mages a chance.”

There. She’d aired her grievances, her feelings. He could do with them whatever he pleased.  _Maker, turn his gaze on you._

There was something behind his piercing gaze, those amber eyes boring a hole through hers as if to read her mind. And then a wry smile softened pursed lips.

“Inquisitor, may I be frank with you a moment?”

Was he ever not with her? “Please, Cullen. How many times have I asked you to call me by my name when we’re alone?” she asked as she withdrew her hand from his cheek.

His smile brightened as he wiped away his tears. “Every time. It’s quite endearing,” he complimented with a sniffle.

The fire in her chest snuffed out in a plume of smoke, smothered by his sudden shift in demeanor. “Did … did you just flirt with me?”

He snorted a laugh through his nose as he rubbed his eyes. “I did ask permission to be candid,” he excused as he took her hand in his, “but the reason I asked was to tell you this. I admire you a great deal for a great many reasons. And you, more than any other person in my life, have held me accountable. Not just for my role with the Inquisition, but for my past and my current behavior. You challenge me to be a better person. A person I never thought I could be again.”

“I … you … oh,” she stuttered, the tingle of embarrassment stinging her cheeks. Maker, but it was warm in his office. “I see,” she added as she searched the room for something to say. Of no help to her, she found the toes of their boots touching.

“Amallia?”

His deep baritone filled her ears, rolling through her chest like distant thunder. Try as she might to respond, the moment her lips parted, their eyes met, and Amallia’s breath caught in her chest. Their proximity, the absolute suffocating nearness of him seized her, frozen like a lake in midwinter. Too many seconds passed as she stood there, her hand still in his with his calloused thumb rasping over her fingers. It had been but a week since their arrival at Skyhold, and yet Amallia could not help but recall their nightly walks in Haven, the good advice they’d trade as they learned their new stations in life.

The short hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, static charging, surging as they neared one another. Maker, but he was close, so close her nose filled with him and his breath scalded her lips. Oh, Andraste preserve her, how she ached to feel his kiss again, feel him melt into her while his strength held them fast.

Their lips met with a brief touch, lasting but a fraction of a second. The door opened in a rush of cool mountain air and slammed against the opposite wall as Cassandra strode into Cullen’s office. Amallia startled and Cullen shouted as they flew apart, scrambling to the opposite ends of his desk. Cassandra paid the Commander no mind, fixing her glower on Amallia instead.

“Inquisitor, I require your assistance,” she stated.

Amallia stared in disbelief, mouth gaping. Had the woman not seen  _anything_? “Er … what with?” she asked.

“It is a private matter,” the other woman stated with a careful glance towards Cullen.

Maker, it must be serious. But she couldn’t leave, not when they had work to do. She eyed his desk buried in reports and messages that required her attention, stomach leaping at the thought of leaving work unfinished.

“Return when you’re finished, Ama—Inquisitor. They’re not going anywhere.”

A short breath caught in her throat at the Commander’s slip of decorum. And yet, Cassandra still failed to notice. “I will return as soon as I am able,” she stated. “Thank you, Commander.”

Cassandra turned on her heel for the door, boots heavy on the rough stone in her haste to be on her way. Before Amallia took a single step, Cullen’s warmth radiated over her as he pressed a kiss to her cheek. “Bring a bottle of wine when you return? It might help us respond to our dearest Bann Nosey-Arsehole.”

Amallia laughed as she parted from him and strode for the door, leaving him with a small smile over her shoulder.

Two bottles ought to get their creativity flowing.


End file.
